Are there any Positive Impacts of a Pandemic? Posttraumatic Growth of Nurses Who are Struggling with COVID-19

Abstract

Objective: It is known that COVID-19 pandemic causes high levels of acute stress disorder, anxiety, burnout syndrome, depression and, post-traumatic stress disorder in health professionals. In addition, it has been revealed that nurses working with COVID-19 patients are more negatively affected by this process. Actually, experienced traumatic events do not only lead to negative changes in people. On the contrary, some people also experience positive alterations after traumatic events, which affect their lives in various areas. This study was conducted to determine the post-traumatic growth of the nurses struggling with COVID-19. Methods: The research has been made as a descriptive study with the 559 nurses working in COVID-19 pandemic clinics between January-March 2021 in Turkey. The data of the research were collected in an online survey. Results: Post-traumatic growth inventory total score of the nurses is found as 53.95±18.89. There is a medium to strong (0.61-0.94) positive correlation between post-traumatic growth inventory total score and sub-dimension scores. Conclusion: In literature, when other studies which examined the nurses’ post-traumatic growth levels are checked, it can be said that; in our study, nurses’ post-traumatic growth levels remained below the average. It is recommended that studies evaluating nurses' post-traumatic growth levels should be carried out at regular intervals and centers that will provide holistic support to nurses to support their positive development should be expanded.